By Amy Corderoy, Health Editor

7 September 2015 — 2:12pm

The Packer Foundation has pledged millions of dollars to fund long-distance organ retrievals that will help with the desperate shortage of organ donors in Australia.

At a news conference in Sydney on Monday morning, members of the Packer family joined St Vincent's Hospital staff, nuns and former politicians to announce the commitment from the Packer Foundation and the Crown Resorts Foundation, which could see between five and ten million dollars spent supporting St Vincent's transplant work over the next 10 years.

The director of the unit, Phillip Spratt, said he was pleased to finally be acknowledging the Packer family contribution.

"It's long overdue," he said. "When we started this transplant program in 1984 with Dr Chang, Kerry Packer said we could use their planes to do the transports, and he didn't want any publicity, he wanted it kept quiet, so we have never really made a big deal about it."

St Vincent's surgeon Paul Jansz said the support of the foundations made a huge difference, particularly to ground-breaking programs such as one St Vincent's recently pioneered to use hearts for transplant that have already stopped beating."We get hearts that have just stopped, reanimate them, get them going on a special rig to get them working again and then transplant them," Associate Professor Jansz said of the procedure, which is known colloquially by staff as the "heart in a box" program.

The donation would have a "huge" effect. "That heart in a box and lung in a box program will increase donors by about 30 per cent, which is a lot," he said.

Former Liberal senator Helen Coonan, who now chairs the Crown Resorts Foundation, said it had agreed its share of the funding would be uncapped.

The Vincent's is now performing about 90 transplants each year, with six in the past week, alone, and expects to increase its numbers as it develops new technologies.

"It is uncapped, so it will depend on how many transplants are done," she said. "The technology is getting better so it could be more and more … but really you couldn't have these kinds of developments in hospitals, with the numbers they are doing now, if you don't have the support processes to actually get it happening."

Around 1600 people are on Australian organ transplant waiting lists at any time, and Australia has a low rate of organ donation compared to other parts of the world.

Less than 1 per cent of people die in hospital in the specific circumstances where organ donation is possible, according to Donate Life.

Kerry Packer famously received a kidney transplant at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney in the year 2000 after suffering for years with kidney problems. Mr Packer had one kidney removed in 1986 when it was found to be cancerous, and he suffered recurring problems with the remaining kidney.

"When you are dead you're dead," he said. "If you can help someone in death that's the greatest gift you can give."

Mr Packer's wife, Roslyn Packer, said her husband was "incredibly private about his generosity", but the family now wanted to publicly support the work St Vincent's was doing.

"With James [Packer] and Gretel [Packer] and our family, and the Crown and Packer Foundations we have made a commitment to continue to cover the costs of the heart and lung retrieval for another ten years," she said.

Amy is Health Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald. Before working at the Herald she worked as a freelance journalist and radio presenter, as well as writing for a number of publications for doctors. She also keeps a health blog at www.dailylife.com.au.